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Words for Departure | Introduction

Louise Bogan’s poem “Words for Departure” was published in her first book of poetry, Body of This Death (1923). In 1922, Bogan had spent six months in Vienna, immersing herself in her work and studying European poetry. When she returned from this period of study, she found a publisher, Robert M. McBride & Company of New York City and within months had published her first compilation of poems. The twenty-seven poems in this first collection of work often focus on romantic relationships and on sexual betrayal. This is true of “Words for Departure,” as well, which, while offering advice for a departing lover, also reveals the depth of pain suffered at a lover’s betrayal.

The poems in this first book reveal Bogan’s study of classical lyrical poetry, with its emphasis on traditional themes. The author uses the classical lyrical motifs of love, time, nature, and rebirth in “Words for Departure” to suggest that all four of these themes are permanently interwoven when love is lost. Bogan studied the poetry of William Butler Yeats and was influenced by modern poetry, but she also adopted the ideas of English Renaissance poets such as John Donne, including some of the metaphysical poet’s traditions.

“Words for Departure” was written only a few years after Bogan’s husband died but, because the marriage was not a happy one, it is difficult to identify his death as a source for this poem. While Bogan used her poetry to tell stories, the narrative is never obvious and the source of the image not easily defined. Instead the reader must work at deciphering the meaning.

Many of the poems from Body of This Death were reprinted in Bogan’s later books, though this is not true for “Words for Departure,” which is contained only in this first collection. Body of This Death has been out of print for many years and as of 2004 was difficult to find; however, “Words for Departure” can be found online at some poetry Websites.

Words for Departure Summary

Overview
Bogan’s lyrical poem “Words for Departure” offers instructions for a departing lover, but the poem goes beyond simple leave-taking to create an image of love found and then lost. The poem is divided into three sections, each containing several stanzas. The first section is one of oppositions and takes place in the present tense. The second section is focused on memories, recalling the lover as he was in the past. The final section pushes the lover away and looks to the future. The poem itself is filled with ambiguities that reveal the pain the speaker feels at her lover’s betrayal. In the end, although she instructs him on how a lover should leave, her own grief at this loss is captured in her inability to watch him leave.

Lines 1–5
The first line of Bogan’s poem begins with the word “nothing,” a word that is repeated several times in the first section of the poem. With the first line, the author also creates an opposition that dominates the entire poem. Initially the first line suggests a stagnant existence, when time stops and nothing is remembered and nothing is forgotten. The speaker would like time to stand still, but the poem quickly moves into real time, as images of the passing day reveal that she cannot hold back time. The author recalls the early morning world outside the lovers’ room, with the noise of wagons moving on the pavement and the evidence of recent rain still on the windowsill. The use of “we awoke” reveals they are lovers who have shared this room during the night.

There is a world beyond their room, and it is this world that will intrude. The town exists just outside the window. Bogan creates images of the town in only a few words. The chimney pots that grace the rooflines are compared to trees, only this image is a “grotesque” caricature of nature in which birds must nestle among the roofs in manmade perches rather then those created by nature’s hand. In this instance, pavement and buildings have replaced nature, defiling what nature has constructed. The word “grotesque” also refers to the narrator’s individual world, which is in turmoil because the loved one will leave that day for another love. The loss of the lover is a distortion of the author’s own world, an incongruity in her natural world, where love has been replaced by treachery.

Lines 6–11
The second stanza of the first section repeats the opening of the first stanza, with the repetition of the word “nothing” and the same opposition of ideas and lack of movement that opened the poem. The moment of separation is approaching, but the poet has not yet accepted the end of the love affair, and she cannot look beyond this moment to a future without her lover. All she sees at this moment is nothing. In the next lines Bogan’s focus shifts subtly from the lovers to the passage of time that marks their final hours together. The hours of the day are marked by “bells” that remind the speaker that only a few hours remain before the lover leaves her. The warm summer day begins to cool as evening approaches. While the first stanza noted the morning of their final day, the second stanza observes that time is continuing its unstoppable move toward the day’s conclusion. The day wanes and the “streets” become “deserted.” Soon the moon begins to light the dusk and the day is ending. The dark signals both the end of the day and the end of the relationship.

Lines 12–15
The last stanza of the first section develops a fuller picture of the lovers. While they were not described in the poem’s opening lines, in these lines the lovers stand together, face-to-face, with hands clasped and foreheads touching. It is the moment of their parting. Once again the author uses nothing to describe this couple. Nothing remains of the love that once existed. In line 14... » Complete Words for Departure Summary